Why am I not depressed?
11 December 2009
Well excuse me! If you think I should curl up in a corner weeping just to fit your preconceived idea of how a dying person should feel, you can…. go away!
A predicted life expectancy is not a set death sentence
To start with, a predicted life expectancy isn’t set in stone. It’s just a doctor’s best guess, and they frequently guess wrong. You can’t accept it and live your life by that prediction.
At one point they they resuscitated me and told my family I would probably die in the night.
After that every day is pretty much a gift.
Then they said maybe a couple of weeks and I should go home and spend what time I had left with my family, but my son emptied half the shops in Telford of various ice lollies and fruit juices just to find a form of fluid I could swallow without vomiting, and a hundred or so homemade apple juice ice lollies later one of my kidneys decided that maybe it hadn’t been crushed enough to totally give up.
I had to fill in a form to claim for disability benefits that said on the top that it was for “people who could not reasonably be expected to live for more than six months”. That was a doozy, try filling out a form with that printed on it and not shedding a tear or two. That was in May 2008. You know what? I watched the Christmas edition of Doctor Who, the one with the Racnoss Queen and Catherine Tate in a wedding dress. Yup! Still here!
By June 2009 it occurred to some of my doctors that I didn’t appear to have popped my clogger just yet, so they scanned me. The cancer had shrunk unexpectedly. Maybe the treatment they had told me didn’t work had had a belated effect, or maybe it was an infinite improbability field caused by all the people, both locally, and online around the world, who took the time to spend a few moments wishing me well. So now my doctors predict I have somewhere between five and ten years.
Meh! I’ve had a couple of kidney failures since then, so that’s maybe revised downward? I’m not even going to bother asking an opinion.
The point I am making is, the length of time you have left, is like the saying “How long is a piece of string?” It depends, it varies. In fact it is more like “How long is a piece of elastic?” Its changeable. On the one hand any chance infection could blow me out like a candle, on the other, the longer I survive, the better treatments are getting. I might outlive you!
If someone is in their seventies, they are a good deal more likely to die in the next few years than a healthy person in their twenties, but people don’t generally make the assumption that every pensioner should be locked in depression crying their eyes out. So why make that assumption about me?
I don’t spend every moment of every day going, “I’mgoingtodie…I’mgoingtodie…I’mgoingtodie…”
If I did I would be exhausted.
I have done everything I can
I know my lifespan is likely to be limited and that I won’t be here to look after the people I love. That is the one that is the real doozy, its the one thing that could break my heart. Seeing how sad it makes the people who love me.
Hearing my son shout at me “I wish you would hurry up and die so that I could start getting over it!”
I can’t make my family and friends not be sad but the things that I can do for them I have done.
I have made my will.
I have arranged for my son to have a family to care for him and live with.
I have delegated tasks to various friends, for example one friend is in charge of notifying my email list when I die.
Whatever could be done I have done, and for the rest of it I have to trust them to look after each other.
Breath deep. Accept. It gets to me sometimes, but because I’ve done what I can, I don’t spend every minute of every day stressing over it.
Maybe I am
Just because I walk through life with my social face on, smiling and joking doesn’t mean I never feel down.
If you are seriously ill for a week, your friends rally round. If you are ill for a couple of months your friends pull together and help out, but there comes a point where they either have to pick up the slack of their own lives or burn out. So if you want to keep a functioning network of friends you save the serious ranting and hysteria for the professionals.
I get sad sometimes, but unless you are either family or being paid to listen to me I’m not going to throw my moods in your face.
A smiling face doesn’t always mean its all O.K.
I don’t have the energy
My repeated kidney failures have left my physically weak. I get a lot of infections. My blood count isn’t brilliant which results in me being tired a lot of the time.
I just do not have the energy left over to cope with being miserable!
That might sound as though its not the logical way round, but it does take a lot of mental energy to concentrate on everything that is bad and going wrong, and to stress out and worry about it.
I don’t have that energy to spare, so I don’t.
The small things matter!
I spent a good few months feeling surprised to wake up in the morning. If I have a specially nasty kidney infection I still do feel surprised to wake up. If your first thought on waking is, “Oh wow! I’m still alive!” it does brighten the day a little.
A lot of things are small mood lifts for me.
Seeing sunlight on a spider’s web.
Hearing the song of a bird.
The texture of a brand new pair of socks.
When you know you might be leaving the world early, you can decide to pay attention to it’s small treasures.
To quote Ian Fleming “You only live twice, once when you are born, and once when you look death in the face.”
Everyone could pay attention to how beautiful the world is, but sometimes it takes being told you are going to die, to remind you to actually do it.
So I shan’t bother to be depressed today, thank you!
Read other posts in Val’s diary here:
2 June 2010 – Hooray for corsets
3 March 2010 – It’s your funeral
24 February 2010 – So what is a stent?
10 February 2010 – A nice cup of tea
3 February 2010 The joys of negative thinking
26 January 2010 – My secret tattoos
20 January 2010 – Plumbing problems (part II)
20 January 2010 – Plumbing problems (part I)
6 January 2010 – Of vampires and vaccinations
29 December 2009 – Beauty and fashion
17 December 2009 – How the Doctor kept me going!
4 December 2009 – Why I didn’t want to attend Severn Hospice!
